“…For a Stein space , a complex Lie group and its exponential map , we say that a holomorphic map is a product of exponentials if there are holomorphic maps such that It is easy to see that any map which is a product of exponentials (for some sufficiently large ) is null‐homotopic. In the case where is the special linear group , the converse follows from as explained in . However, it turns out to be a difficult problem to determine the minimal number of needed factors in dependence of the dimensions of and .…”